1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a technique for setting acoustic characteristics of an audio apparatus.
2. Description of the Related Art
As a technique for setting acoustic characteristic parameters for an audio apparatus, such as an equalizer parameter for setting the frequency characteristics of a gain of the audio apparatus, a time correction (TCR) parameter for setting the delay among sounds output to speakers, a crossover parameter for setting the frequency band of sound output to each of the speakers, and the like, and a technique for downloading acoustic characteristic parameters stored in a server and setting the downloaded acoustic characteristic parameters for the audio apparatus, has been known (for example, Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2009-130643).
With the above-mentioned techniques for downloading acoustic characteristic parameters from a server and setting the downloaded acoustic characteristic parameters for an audio apparatus, the server may release stored various acoustic characteristic parameters, and users of individual audio devices are able to download desired acoustic characteristic parameters from the server and set the downloaded acoustic characteristic parameters for the audio apparatuses.
However, acoustic characteristics suitable for an audio apparatus depend on the acoustic environment such as the speaker configuration of the audio apparatus and an acoustic space to which the audio apparatus is applied. For the above reason, individual acoustic characteristic parameters stored in a server are only applicable to audio apparatuses under specific acoustic environments. Thus, the availability of desirable acoustic characteristic parameters is low.
That is, if acoustic characteristic parameters created so as to be suitable for an acoustic environment that is different from the acoustic environment of the audio apparatus are directly applied to the audio apparatus, output sound from the audio apparatus does not necessarily have an excellent sound quality. On the contrary, the output sound may have a low quality.
Under such circumstances, only acoustic characteristic parameters created so as to be suitable for an acoustic environment that totally matches an audio apparatus need to be applied to the audio apparatus. However, in this case, even if various acoustic characteristic parameters are stored in a server, only limited acoustic characteristic parameters can be used for individual audio apparatuses.